Reynard votes Labor (and perhaps all Watership Down does as well): the Hunting Act has passed. Foxhunting, deerhunting, and the coursing of hares with dogs have been outlawed in Britain as of today. The last legal hunts rode out yesterday in Wiltshire and elsewhere. The foxhounds are getting the bulk of the press, it seems, but the Guardian has one photo of a black greyhound, the last winner of the Waterloo Cup in hare-coursing, receiving what looks like an emotional kiss on the brow. I wish they had printed his name.
I feel several ways about this news. Hunts are splendid, yes, and old and all. I am not too choked up about the foxhounds. They seem like game beasts as likely as any to find some worthwhile other career. Much as I like hares, I am sure I would also like them in a stew, and so I have no inherent reason to oppose sending round-footed greyhounds, springy like wires, to bring them in their long mouths to the pot.
I have great affection for foxes and pity for them too, those inedible little flashes of red fur and cleverness. They always seem so entirely--and unchivalrously!--overmatched by the cataract of horses, dogs, and red-coated bluebloods surging over fences after them. Furthermore I have recently read Lady into Fox, which is very recommendable, terrible and sad, and which does nothing to diminish my natural sympathy for all things vulpine. That sympathy has meant that I have always pulled for the fox to escape. That is always the better story. The hunt itself winning the day is a vulgar triumph, it seems to me, crowned with a meager tatter of bloody fur.
My favorite hunts are anyway the spectral ones, ever in pursuit of some eternally fleeing quarry: a mermaid, a forest sylph, a damned soul, an enchanted hind. Those must at all costs be permitted to continue. We'll not stand for Herne or the Oskorei or Odin's Orkney hunt being shut down. No indeed.
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